The QB Eye Test is completely subjective.

 

The QB Eye Test is completely subjective.

That's unquestionable. Our opinions of the position are informed by things completely outside football, often times. For instance, we will argue against the obvious if a quarterback is playing for the team we've attached ourselves to emotionally.

There are likewise-indisputable traits which all the greats at the position possess. I'm still working out how to arrange the theory, but I have identified three of them: a quarterback has to be a scholar, a general, and a murderer of men's dreams. There is a particular demeanor around the greats, a particular confidence – a confidence born of knowing oneself (and especially one's weaknesses) to a degree that goes beyond exceptional.

Dan Marino knew that he was a statue in the pocket. So he developed the (at the time and for something like more than two decades) quickest release the world had ever seen. Jerry Rice knew he wasn't going to overpower or outrun anyone, so he became a technician as a route-runner.

I'm starting with two anecdotes from the 80s and 90s – the eras before I started watching football with any sort of understanding – because the guys who are coaching right now either grew up in that era, or have studied that era extensively. If I'm going to try to understand these people, and help you understand them along the way, I have to understand how they think, I have to see the way they see. In other words, I have to make an attempt to walk a mile in their moccasins.

Greatness – and this is true of any industry, but as well as finding personal greatness – requires intense introspection. And honesty. Tom Brady didn't become who he is today by ever telling himself that good enough was good enough.

When I watched Ryan Tannehill play in his first preseason series, I saw something. Namely, I saw someone who was better than backups. When I watched Matt Moore play the season before, I saw something too: I saw a guy who couldn't win a close game. I saw it in the Cowboys game, 2011. If my memory serves me – and it often doesn't – Miami only needed a first down to win that contest late. This was Sparano's last gasp – and Matt Moore couldn't get a first down. I knew he didn't have it, maybe the single most important trait for a quarterback: He couldn't murder the Cowboy's Playoff dreams in cold blood.

I'm not here to argue that Tannehill should still be the Dolphins' quarterback. I'm not even really here to argue that Tannehill deserves so much more respect and admiration for what he did against the Bills on Monday night – and what he's done his entire career. I should. If I were going to write a 5 Storylines I Just Can't Jive With this week, it would start and probably end with Ryan Tannehill isn't a top-10 quarterback.

But I've died on that hill too many times to make this all about that.

He threw some rockets under pressure that kept his team in position to be able to win that game. It wasn't all Derrick Henry – and AJ Brown and Julio Jones were injured by their final drive.

This is really more about how I don't see anything when I watch Tua Tagovailoa.

He couldn't beat out Ryan Fitzpatrick. He wasn't voted a team captain going into his second season. His head coach clearly doesn't trust him with the game on the line.

These things are problematic.

They're problematic for a number of reasons. We could talk about how it's problematic that Brian Flores hasn't given Tua opportunities late in games. I have had that conversation. But if we talk about that, we have to talk about how Flores sees Tua in practice every day. He knows who Tua is in the classroom, he knows how he studies film, he knows Tua to a degree that we frankly can't. If Flores can't trust Tua with the game on the line, the Dolphins have a problem at the quarterback spot. And the defensive roster is still too young to overcome the offense.

This is not the 2000 Baltimore Ravens.

Which is interesting to say. I was going to make the argument that the Dolphins don't have a Ray Lewis or the slew of defensive superstars I remember being a part of that team. Except they weren't on that team yet – just Ray Lewis.

Sometimes good coaches are able to win with just-okay squads. Bryan Billick got it did – but he stands as the outlier for winning a Super Bowl: winning with Elvis Grbac at quarterback, and guys named Terry Allen, Qadry Ismail, and Travis Taylor at running back and wide receiver. But enough of me trying to explain how you can't win by keeping your opponent below 20 points consistently enough to win your Division anymore.

I don't see It when I watch Tua play. It's harsh, maybe, but I just don't.

I can't get Joe Burrow talking about knowing the defensive look he got in a key moment late in the game, Week 3 or 4 (whenever, I wrote about this at the time), and knowing exactly the play to beat it out of my head. A risky play, but a play that elevated the play of his entire squad.

What did Tua do to elevate his squad in London? He had a couple real nice scrambles through the middle of the defense. He capitalized a handful of times against a defense that's been out of position and confused by its own playcalling all season. That is the furthest thing from a big deal.

So, I went back and watched the Bengals/Jaguars tilt from a few weeks ago. My takeaway is that the Jaguars have too much talent to have lost this many games. The Bengals are a young offense, and they shot themselves in the foot a couple times, but the Jags gave them everything they could handle. Jacksonville should have won that contest actually.

And watching it back, I noticed something: Urban Meyer's coaching style and game management can be summed up as taking his testicles, laying them on a table, handing the opposing coach a walnut hammer, and encouraging him to join Urban in an exchange of hammers to the nuts. That seems to be all he's good for: trapping his opponents in a game of kicking each other repeatedly in the testicles until one or the other side gives up. The only problem with this approach is that most NFL coaches are either smart enough or know better than to engage in such a contest – you are repeatedly getting kicked in the testicles! Also, if you lose, you look like Brian Flores – I'm sorry, like an idiot.

Brian Flores looks like the worst coach in the League right now. The Transitive Property of Football does not work, but recency bias is very real. When Cincy barely pulled it out against Jacksonville, we were all reacting something like, “Well, it's Zac Taylor – can we trust that guy to win any games in this League with regularity?”

What we should have been saying is that Trevor Lawrence is a damn good quarterback and he was going to get somebody – the roster is too talented for them to keep losing these nut-kicking contests.

But, more even than those three completely damning problems that Tua has hanging over his head – couldn't beat out Fitzmagick, wasn't voted captain, coach doesn't believe in him – my question becomes what does he do well?

He didn't read the field well in London. He didn't manage the game especially well – regardless of whether you agree with me that the 3^rd down where he tried to take a shot at the endzone instead of running for the easy first was a play where he already knew he had fourth down in his pocket and had been instructed to take the shot no matter what (that's the only thing that make sense, unless you're Jared Goff throwing it out of bounds on fourth down – but you already know how I feel about that guy and his loose pants.)— Regardless of all of that. What did Tua do well?

He ran the offense for exactly one drive with timing and precision. And then he failed to get a first down when that was all he needed to win. Just get a first down and the game is over and we aren't talking about how your head coach lost a game of roshambo to Urban Meyer of all people. We aren't talking about how the offensive coordinator situation seems untenable. We aren't talking about how the Dolphins might actually be the worst team in the League with a catfish roster.

That's what a quarterback who is not the answer does to your team and its fanbase when you lose to a team with a quarterback who is so very obviously the answer: It makes all the flaws in your decision-making up to and including the quarterback suspect, and it makes every decision you make after that dubious or flat-out obviously wrong.

In other words, when you miss on the quarterback and try to convince the fanbase and owner that you haven't – regardless of whether the quarterback is an owner pick or a GM pick or yours – you get fired. And if you don't get fired, you do look like the world's biggest asshole. Just ask Steve Wilks of the Cardinals.

You know, the head coach who drafted Josh Rosen.

Do I think Tua is a bust?

That seems like a question I should answer. No, I don't think Tua is a bust. I don't think Tua is good enough to overcome his limitations. He's too small. It jumps off the screen. He's too slim. He's too short. His arm isn't powerful enough. That's a big problem.

See, Drew Brees has been killed his whole career because he has had to wind up from the hip and fire moonshots to get the ball downfield. But he was accurate, and it worked. Same for Russell Wilson – he gets the job done, regardless of his short stature, mostly by getting outside the pocket and not needing to get the ball over his linemen's heads.

Tua is more like Baker Mayfield and Drew Brees in that his game does not exist outside the pocket. The issue starts to arise, however, that Tua isn't accurate enough downfield to rely on his arm deep. He's not strong enough to string passes along “frozen ropes” to dudes, and he's not football smart enough to time his underthrows for pass interferences. So really when he's winding up to throw deep, he's throwing prayers.

Miami wants to run this vertical offense with a quarterback who can't get the ball vertical. That's a problem.

Another problem is that he doesn't have the football experience yet to let it rip in narrow windows. If his first read isn't there or he has to double-clutch it to avoid the rush, I have zero faith he's going to make anything happen. And he didn't, all day in London.

Again, the only thing he did well was for one drive he hit all of his rhythm throws on-time.

If you're expecting Tua to be an undersized Brady – an undersized Mac Jones, as it turns out – you need him to be more dynamic than one drive a game. You need him to have Baker's moxxie or Brees' killer instinct.

Really, Miami needs him to be his own man and his own player, and I don't think he has that guy in him.

Why do I think that?

Precedent, for starters. He's not the only Hawaiian to make it to the NFL. Marcus Mariota grew up in Hawaii, and was also the quiet son of a government operative. If I'm not mistaken, Mariota was FBI and Tua is Military.

“Quiet” is an epithet when it's used to describe a quarterback.

People say Joe Burrow is quiet, but I don't think people know what quiet means. Burrow has a ton of personality, and is anything but quiet with his teammates on the field. Marcus Mariota and Tua Tagovailoa are quiet, as in they don't say much or react emotionally very often. I feel confident I know what I'm talking about because I am the quiet son of a former soldier.

It can be very difficult for people to know how to react toward people like me. They see “quiet” as unresponsive or uncaring, uninvested. People have accused Aaron Rodgers of being those things for his entire because he's soft-spoken and “quiet” with the media.

It can be especially difficult in the locker room. And that's why it's a problem that Tua wasn't voted a Captain: it means he isn't considered a leader.

If your quarterback isn't winning on fourth down, he isn't scoring points on big plays, and he isn't galvanizing the huddle, what is he doing?

Everything I write is too focused on the Dolphins, but Flores almost made it to the Playoffs with Ryan Fitzpatrick as his quarterback. Not because he limited Fitzpatrick's meltdowns (he did to a degree), but because he was able to use Fitzpatrick to galvanize the offense. That's the job of your quarterback. The DC or the head coach can have enough personality to focus and channel the collective effort of a defense. Though it's usually through the middle linebacker or a safety. Ray Lewis, to return to the 2001 example. Dont'a Hightower, if we remember the comparison I made to him vis-a-vis Jerome Baker.

But it's the quarterback that makes the offense work.

They say that quarterback is the most difficult job in sports. And it probably is. I don't follow enough sports to speak to that. But I know that a quarterback is something like, in corporate terms, a middle manager who is responsible for everyone else's jobs, too.

I used to work a break press in a factory. I got good enough at programming the thing, and ran enough quality parts, that after a while I was programming and quality-checking two other guys and their machines, but also still responsible for my own output. I imagine that being quarterback is something like that – only for 12 other guys and everyone else who just happens to be there at the time. (12 because the great quarterbacks are also covering their offensive coordinator and head coach's ass on any given play via checks, audibles, and Hero Ball.)

I sure have used a lot of words to say nothing.

I told you, I'm still feeling this out – and I'm still learning. I don't mean to stand up here preaching at you like I know wtf I'm talking about. I'm trying to make observations and drum up discussion. I bet I sound like a know-it-all prick.

It can be heard to know how to react toward quiet sons of military men.

Thanks for stopping by! This one got out really late today. I've been struggling, if that's not obvious. I went for a walk, did some grocery shopping. And I still have the Game Power Rankings to organize, so I'll be back either later tonight or early tomorrow. I'll talk at you soon.